On Copenhagen and why inland is the new headland

On Copenhagen and why inland is the new headland

Archived

–,
Wednesday,
November,
25,
2009,(11:15am)

Former Oz editor, futurist, author and general upstart Richard Neville has joined Good COP Bad COP as guest interrupter in the countdown to the Copenhagen climate summit. Today we skip forward to 2100 for a look at the property market in Australia.

The science is in and it says all the polar bears falling into the oceans is causing the sea level to rise. Or something.

There are several possible reasons why, the most popular current theory being that glaciers - being made mainly of ice - are melting and sliding at faster rates as the Earth gets hotter.

This is particularly bad news for Antarctica, where the glaciers crash into the ice shelves, which then fall into the sea, forcing the penguins and CSIRO scientists to huddle a little bit closer to each other every year.

Now, there’s no denying sea levels are rising, so don’t start. Remember, projection is not an exact science, but in this case, history is.

In the first 1800 years AD, our oceans swelled by a margin slightly less than an aroused bee. Since 1870, they suddenly found an extra 20cm, and that rate of increase points to a one-metre rise by 2100, which looks like spectacularly bad news for us here in Australia.

It’s more spectacular than that. The West Antarctic ice sheet’s rate of water loss is now around 200 cubic kilometres per year. The sheet contains enough ice to raise sea level by seven metres. On top of this, glaciers in East Antarctica - not previously of concern - are flowing faster than ever, losing around 100 gigatonnes of ice per year. (A gigatonne is the mass of one cubic kilometre of water.)

That’s not all. The Greenland ice sheet is shedding mass at an alarming rate. From discarding 200 gigatonnes annually in previous years, it is now said to be shedding almost 300 gigatonnes. The future looks brilliant for surfers.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, we live near the beach because we choose to, not because it’s the only place left.

So it’s not just our lives that are at risk, it’s our lifestyle.

Sure, it’s happened before and humans managed to deal with it. But unlike 50-odd million years ago, this time around we can’t roll up our mammothskin rugs and box of best sharp bones and head for the hills.

Instead, we’ll all be huddled on top of Mt Isa, being reminded by the wife how she knew we should have coughed up extra for the penthouse Gold Coast apartment and would still be at least 15 floors above sea level like Marjorie and Dennis.

You think the lifts will still work?

Fortunately, Kevin’s Department of Climate Change released these statistics just this week, which not only provide an alarming snapshot of the dangers of climate change, but also a handy reference tool for anyone in the long-term property market.

Will Ruddy get it right on pollution at Copenhagen? Tell us what you want him to do about and we’ll add it to list of 50 things Aussies want from Copenhagen in our Open Letter to Kevin Rudd here.

So here’s the state by state breakdown of where not to buy* if you’re looking for a nest egg for the grandkids. And here’s the official document if you don’t believe me…

WA
K Rudd says: Life will get significantly damper for those in Busselton, Mandurah, Rockingham and Bunbury.
GCBC says: It’s a short trip to the beach if you live in Donnybrook-Balingup, Murray, Serpentine-Jarrahdale and Dardanup.

SA
K Rudd says: It’s wellies and Selley’s if you’ve bought in Charles Sturt and Port Adelaide-Enfield, like 55 per cent of your statemates.
GCBC says: Sandy crevices for all in the City Centre, West Torrens, Walkerville and Prospect.

Tasmania
K Rudd says: Start bailing now if you live in Clarence, Central Coast, Break O’Day and Waratah-Wynyard.
GCBC says: For once, there’s a good reason to buy in Brighton, Kentish, Northern Midlands and the Waratah-Wynyard highlands.

Aren’t you getting a bit too overheated about the destiny of Australian coastal real estate? Before the fibro shacks sink into the abyss, there’ll be plenty of warnings… plus a boom in high-altitude properties. At least, until the bushfires strike. Meanwhile, the Pacific islands will have disappeared, along with much of Vietnam and Bangladesh. If the sea rise is only a metre, it’s also farewell to New York City, Florida, The Bahamas, the Guyanas, Belize Jamaica and much of Mexico, so stop whining Australia.

So that leaves Queensland and a scenario almost too horrible to contemplate. If children are reading this with you, cover their ears and ask them to look away.

In Queensland, a one-metre rise in sea levels will send Moreton Bay, Mackay, the Gold Coast, Fraser Coast, Bundaberg and the Sunshine Coast all tumbling into the ocean by 2100.

That collectively represents almost 85 per cent of all homes in Queensland.

Eighty-five per cent.That’s more than 3,500,000 homeless Queenslanders.

By this time there’ll be many more millions of climate change refugees… and we’ll have to accept them. It’s a fair payback for our mean-spirited panic over the “threat” of a handful of war-torn Sri Lankans.

Instead of groaning, let’s get innovative. Forget road building, design the future. Look at this plan to house 50,000 climate change refugees in a Lilypad, or “floating Ecopolas”, a self-sufficient amphibious city, powered by renewable energy.

And because no one who lives in Queensland is actually born there, there’s a fair chance that, like most humans do when they face extreme crisis and dispossession, they’ll head for home. Their real homes, the ones they eschewed as teenagers or redundancy-cheque retirees in the mistaken belief that an extra couple of degrees Celsius equates to a carefree existence of booze, barbecues and topless beach babes.

They won’t listen to the slick-haired developers in cheap shiny suits extolling the seaside potential of Somerset, Isaac, Scenic Rim, Logan, Gympie and North Burnett.

They’ll say things like bugger that, mate and crikey, yer havin a flamin lend, and, suddenly noticing it’s actually got an extra couple of degrees Celsisus warmer down south, migrate en masse back to the family home and fill civilised southern backyards with their rusty Hiluxes and cane toads and awful beer.

If I knew the smiley face version of shudder, I’d insert it here, because you can bet this isn’ t the type of nightmare scenario K Rudd is planning to table at Copenhagen.

He of all people should know what kind of damage an itinerant mob of 3.5 million roaming Maroons can do to the countryside.

So here’s what I’d like our PM to keep in mind before he jets off - keep sea levels down and keep Queenslanders in Queensland. Don’t let 200 years of natural selection go to waste.

As well as toughening our character with a dash Blitz Spirit, climate turbulence will heighten our imaginations and lift our game. Robert Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, believes our children could “find themselves spending their time and treasure moving cities inland, managing refugee populations, relocating agriculture and keeping other creatures from going extinct’’. That’s a high calling – better than gett’n pissed at the footy every weekend.

*Author’s note - a) will accept no responsibility for any speculative investments made on the advice of this blog, and; b) most of the figures used are from http://www.cmar.csiro, solely on the basis that their graphs were easiest to understand.

Post script.

Judging from previous comments, some of you think global warming is now a dead duck because a hacker downloaded a bunch of emails from a university that showed scientists were prone to exaggeration. Get real. Check this out from The Guardian, November 24. Here’s the short form:

“The 2007 IPCC assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.”

Have Your Say

Neville is right to emphasize the global impact of sea change, rather than dwell on the declining value of waterviews. Innovation and a shift of lifestyles are key to future survival, as well the eradication of Liberal Party troglodytes.

Time and again the “science” of global warming has been shown to be complete rubbish.
This is just one more confirmation of that. This is just a little more than an ‘exaggeration’ This is the top alarmist climate change “scientists” caught out fudging figures, corrupting data and destroying evidence.

Kevin Trenberth “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t.”

The reality is the globe has been cooling for nearly a decade. It doesn’t take much digging to see that this whole man made global warming deal is a scam.
Its good to see more and more people waking up to it.

Kevin E. Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

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